The front section of Tain’s rooms was empty but voices came from his bedroom, and Kalina came out of the doorway, her face streaked and blotchy. She threw herself at me, body quivering with sobs, and I held her for a moment, trying to think of comforting words. Of course, there were none. My tongue felt like a dry block of cheese as I patted her shoulders awkwardly.
“It’s like with Etan,” she mumbled into my chest. “He’s being brave, Jov, but it’s just the same.”
I took her hand and led her back into Tain’s room.
He sat up in bed, and for a moment another image transposed itself: my uncle, looking at me from his bed with much the same pallor and demeanor. A wan smile with swollen lips, skin slick with sweat. “Is there any point in me being in bed?”
I took his pulse. “You’ll be exhausted soon enough.” For the first time I noticed Hadrea in the corner. His pulse, given Tain knew what was coming, was faster than a normal resting rate, but, unlike Etan, his own nerves might be speeding his heart. I glanced at her and a stab of worry pierced my calm. Now she’d see me in the same way everyone did, eventually. Bound by my compulsions, unable to react like a normal person. Cold. I realized then the depths of my longing for her to see me differently.
But there was no time for that worry. I counted backward in my head. Tain had eaten the fig reasonably early this morning. It was late afternoon now. His symptoms had progressed at roughly half the pace that Etan’s had. Maybe less. Did that mean he had ingested less poison than his uncle, or simply had better resistance to it? Caslav had sickened slower than Etan, also, despite likely having a greater dose.
“How many figs did you eat? Was it just the one?”
His jaw tightened with guilt. “Not even a whole one.”
Almost certainly a smaller dose than Caslav, then. I tried to suppress the flare of optimism—if we have more time, if the dose was less, perhaps it won’t be lethal—no point relying on that.
“Are you sure it was the fig?” Tain asked. “You ate one, too, remember. And Eliska. And Marco.” I heard the plea in his words. How much we both wished he had not chosen this morning to rebel against our traditional roles.
I nodded. “I made your broth after the riot. Unless you ate something else today, it was the fig. And the jar is gone from the Council room.” I hadn’t been poisoned, but had chosen a fig at random from the jar. How had the poisoner known which one Tain would take? I looked up at my sister. “Kalina, can you find Eliska and Marco? Don’t warn them, just let me know if either looks ill. We all ate from that jar.” If our enemy had poisoned a selection of the fruit, chances were Tain wouldn’t have been the only one to take a poisoned fig. If somehow they had been able to poison the actual fruit Tain had taken, then only those two people had been in the room with him at the time. Though a chill spread through me at the thought, I set it aside. Finding the poisoner had ceased to be my first priority. Now that the worst had happened, saving Tain’s life was what mattered.
We needed to find something to counteract whatever was in his system. Last time we had gone through every book, every page of Etan’s notes on remedies, and had come up empty. But there was one area my training had neglected, and my ignorance on the subject had already had consequences. I glanced over at Hadrea. “I need you to do something for me, too,” I said. “I need you to find me a Doranite man called Batbayer.”
Salgar (red death)
DESCRIPTION: Naturally occurring mineral, reddish, soft and crumbly; often coexists with gold, orote, and opal. Often used in dye-making, cosmetics, illustrations, and other artworks.
SYMPTOMS: Tightness in the throat, vomiting of a brown mucous character mixed with blood, fainting, excessive thirst, abdominal pain, shivering, stools dark and offensive, pulse weak and rapid, great nervous prostration, and delirium.
PROOFING CUES: Strong metallic taste difficult to disguise in food, sharp smell.
18
Kalina
I lit the last of the wall lamps and returned to my seat by the bed. On Jov’s request I had observed that Marco and Eliska both remained in apparent good health; it hurt knowing one of those most trusted Councilors was likely the poisoner. Hadrea had left in search of the drug seller Batbayer, who, she guessed, might be hiding in the protected quarter, while my brother intended to pressure Baina and all of his other contacts. His desperate, unrealistic hope was that something used in the production of new recreational drugs, ones he had not heard of, would be the source of the poison. As I rested my head against the back of the chair, watching Tain through half-lidded eyes sore from tears, no part of me felt Jovan’s optimism.
At first Tain and I had pretended together. He’d made jokes. I’d read from my notes about the Darfri, as if he might still have a chance to deliver the speech I’d planned. But brave as he might be, Tain couldn’t stop the fear showing through in the end. Eventually, instead of jokes he spoke of his frustrations, the things he felt now he would never do. I had listened and held his hand, as he admitted his stupidity and rashness in taking food against Jovan’s wishes. How he had been wrong in whom he trusted. How he wished he had done so many things differently: respected his responsibilities as my family had, learned sooner about the city and the estates and especially the Darfri. Listened to his uncle.
He spoke as a man who knew he would see no more tomorrows.
There was little to say to comfort him. I found, in any case, that when I tried to say anything, a vise clamped around my throat, and my eyes ran with tears that soothed and then stung as they dried. He loved me, in the purest way our culture valued the most, but my feelings for him were a thorned flower, painful and beautiful and scarring. No lovers I took knew me as he did, saw me as completely. I was a sister and not, beloved but alone. It had never hurt so much as now.
Tain lay silent, blank eyes staring at the wall. His comfortable chamber felt stifling. The parcel at my feet that I had brought here from our apartments seemed to pulse with magnetic life, to the pounding rhythm of my heart. I forced myself not to look at it. I would stay here for Tain as long as he was awake. Outside, dusk had turned to darkness, and the exhaustion of his body fighting the poison had drained him. He would sleep soon.
When he spoke again, his words were slurred. “I … didn’t do the right things,” he murmured, his eyes fixed on the wall at the other side of the room. I leaned in closer, bringing my hand to his hot forehead, unsure he was fully conscious.
“Maybe none of us did,” I managed to say, my voice squeaky and tight. “But you saw me for me, and I always loved you for that.” My stupid eyes welled up again; my free hand swiped them away. Tain needed strength and comfort, not weakness.
I sat there with him until he was asleep. Then I extracted my hand gently and stroked his cheek. I tried to say goodbye, but nothing came out.
Everything felt a bit colder as I bent and picked up the parcel. I’d written a short message to Jov on the back of my notes for the speech; those I left on the chair. When Jov came back and read it, it would be too late to stop me. If anyone else found it first, Etan’s code would look like nothing but a series of lines and dots.
No one paid me any heed on my way through the dark streets, down the hill toward the lake. The shores were deserted and unlit, and the overgrown grass tickled my bare legs like little wet fingers clutching at me. I stopped within sight of the south river gate tower, hovering by the ruins of the destroyed bridge.